A Lament for Literature, Lately Slain, With Subsequent Ode to Her Saviour, Brian Vick

Literature was sick! Byron, despair,
All ye wilted laurels droop
In Wordsworth's hair,
Whitman's freedom is confined
And sage-like Milton lately rhymed
In an upstart Asian scholar's lair

Where he, or, more justly, she
Dissects them with torturous cries
And consigns them with their race to die,
Last of their self-willed, magnificent creed
From up whom sprang -- and with them dies --
That upstart poetry.

What maladies, muse, invest a blanching face,
What nightmares hold your craven gaze,
Have rose imps mocked and torn your fair,
Lithe frame? O mourn, all ye rustics, for she
Hath lately lost her frail and sickly fame!

But wait, comes a hero from the West,
Delicate, sensible isles far,
Of pen-sharp hand and subtle mind
To venge our maiden's fall, all while
He guts the oriental prince
Of her extravagant affair,
And clears the air
Of lit'rature's singed flesh.

Hail, Vickers, noble Brian, who abides
The lofty peaks, and gazes down the ignorant tides
Of rotten leaks, that threaten to consume,
With ravenous flair, our damsel in distress,
Penelope fair. Yes, string the bow, vicious Vick,
And shoot the suitors numerable down,
These hordes that hoard and feed
Their wretched frames in ignorant sleep.
Once literature is saved

Oh the bells, the harmonies we'll play –
That one man, glorious man, lacking all pretense
Bent only to the highest aim, the greater good,
Married text to common sense
While all her scholars lately wrecked
Furnish forth a double wake.